Hard

The wind outside is howling and I cannot catch my breath.

My eyes are leaking as I try not to wake my babies, asleep in the other room.

Well, one at least.

The other one has such finely tuned intuition that she is probably already awake, worrying about me.

My fingers snatch my prayer shawl, gifted in love and solidarity, as I try to wrestle some comfort from the prayers of this great cloud of witnesses.

I smother myself with the pillow made from my dad’s shirt, willing myself to smell him one more time.

I imagine walking into a room, sitting down and just announcing,

This is all really hard.

But that feels scarily vulnerable.

And also it’s the middle of the night,

So I turn instead to the solitude of the world wide web (ha!), where at least I can moderate the comments.

Friends, this is all really hard.

Some days, I really, really want to feel better.

I do all the things right.

Linger over my coffee instead of rushing off into mayhem.

Read a book instead of scrolling on my phone.

Drink all the water.

Eat a cheese stick and raw nuts instead of twelve Hershey bars.

Take my medicine.

Make myself go outside and move around a little bit.

I try to reason with myself–

It is beautiful outside.

These things are supposed to make you happy.

And then I want to punch rational-me in the face.

The angry part of grief is a delight.

And, man, it washes over me quick and hard.

I hate all the things.  Injustice.  Cancer.  Covid.  People who say stupid stuff.

People who don’t say anything.  People who dare to carry on with their lives like nothing has happened.  The sun.

It’s great.

Some days, I try to surrender to the now.  To accept that I am not ok and listen to my body.

I don’t make my bed because I barely get out of it.

I abandon my children to unreasonable amounts of screen time and questionable food choices.

I yell at myself for being lazy and then yell at myself for yelling at myself because I know that one day I will look back and realize what I can almost hear now, if only I could make the racket inside my head just.  Stop.

That this is all just really hard. 

Of course, there are plenty of days where denial works just fine.

More or less.

I walk familiar halls and teach letter sounds to tiny ones.

This. This, I know how to do.

I read a script and monitor standardized tests.

And the monotony lulls me into a not-unhappy moment of blurry reality.

I greet students by name and tell everyone that asks me how I am that I am fine.

Fine.

And I am.

More or less.

Less, I guess.

It’s just that this is all really hard.